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Are Human Beings Just Intelligent Bacteria?
Here's an interesting theory on why we exist. (We said "interesting," not "cheerful")
Following the Tools & Craft reference to Burning Man, I rewatched this time-lapse videos shot there a few years ago:
I remember finding this video pretty when I first viewed it, but something about it bothered me this time around. The perfect semicircle of the "town" taking shape atop the more organic canvas of the sand, interrupted by little dust storms, didn't seem beautiful to me; instead it seemed almost…grotesque. As the lasers kicked in and the illuminated vehicles began moving back and forth, we humans look, as we always do from afar and in fast motion, insectoid.
The entire scene reminded me of a Joe Rogan rant from years ago:
I think human beings are just a very complicated form of bacteria. I think if you looked at the earth as a living organism, and who's to say that it's not some sort of super organism? It's certainly a host for life, and we're considered a living organism, and we're a host for life. There's more [e. coli] living inside our gut than there have ever been humans on this earth. There's bacteria constantly around you, and your body is fighting off that bacteria, until your body grows old and dies, and then it doesn't fight anymore. That bacteria just eats your body. That's what its there for.
If you looked at the Earth as a living organism as you're flying into L.A and as you're passing all these beautiful mountains, and you see the ocean ahead, and it all looks so natural and beautiful, and then you see L.A. and you think, well, what the fuck is that? It's a growth, that's cancer. Its big, its brown, it stinks, smoke's coming out of it, and it gets bigger every year. And it doesn't matter what you do, its going to keep going, you could knock it down with a hurricane and it just rebuilds. Light it on fire, it rebuilds.
I think if you were an intelligent life-form from another planet, you wouldn't see individual people, you wouldn't see housekeepers and limo drivers, and stand up comedians. You wouldn't see that, you would see mold on a sandwich.
I think if you look at us subjectively and the way we've always been, it doesn't matter how much access to info we have, it doesn't matter how much technological innovation we have, we're always going to destroy the Earth, 'cos I think, one way or another, that's what we're supposed to do.
That's our purpose here on earth. We are here to fuck shit up. I think we're here to eat the sandwich.
Redditor Nesshie91 provided the above transcription in a thread there. The subsequent discussion is illuminating, touching on everything from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot to a 1934 scientific paper by Russian biologist Georgii Frantsevich Gause called "The Struggle for Existence," which explains what happens when bacteria reaches its limits.
If the theory above strikes a chord in you, the thread is worth the read and it's right here.
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Human beings... actually, life on earth is a nanosecond of time in what is believed to be the 'age' of our universe. Why would humans have a 'purpose' other than to grow, survive, thrive, destroy and die? Isn't that the same as every other collection of bound cells? Plants, insects, birds, water, lava, planets, stars, galaxies... we act individually but we act as one .
I've been trying to think why we're here and this is one of the conclusions I've come to. The earth might be a tiny part in a huge organism and we're killing it like cancer. Maybe the bacteria way smaller than we know of wonder wtf are they there for.
That's the fucking truth. About month ago I was telling to a friend that it seems to me we aren't anything except bacteria or maybe virus or anything. I was seeking for someone to talk about with. I have to say even if we skip the scientific reasons it is completely clear that this unfair world is just a tiny part of whole universe. Like virus or bacteria. They improve themselves as we do. They die. They burn. They live. Maybe they have all requirements that we have, to be survived.
Let me be clear it appears to be white bacteria trying to destroy black or so-called or known to be melanated beings how's that
Yes I concur it also white so-called a melinated struggle for the right to create or destroy. The game ends I'm rebirth so .....
"Fuck shit up" I would consider it cleaning up. Cause thats the main purpose of bacteria, wothout it the universe would be a trashcan.
"There's bacteria constantly around you, and your body is fighting off that bacteria, until your body grows old and dies, and then it doesn't fight anymore. That bacteria just eats your body. That's what its there for."
You've seized upon those two sentences. What did you think of the larger point, and the visual analogy of L.A. that he made?
Not sure what the larger point is. Who, looking out an airplane window, hasn't reflected on humanity's place in the ecosystem of earth? But comparing it to mold on a sandwich is a facile, pseudo-philosophical metaphor, and concluding that "our purpose" is "to fuck shit up" just sounds like twelve year old nihilism.